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Facing Missions Today 31: Post-Christian Culture and Changes in the
Workplace
In this post, I would like to compare the
challenges facing Christians in the workplace around AD 200 and today. Both contexts involve Christians living as a
minority group within a larger society.
The former period is represented in the writings of Tertullian, who
advised Christians how to live in a pre-Christian society. Does Tertullian give us some food for thought
as we increasingly realize in the West that we live in a post-Christian
society?
The Christian author, Tertullian, addressed the
issue of how the minority Christian group should maintain its convictions in
the pagan workplace. He wrote in an era
of idolatry and persecution. In On Idolatry, Tertullian discussed
certain types of work that he believed Christians could not do because they
involved a compromise of their faith. While
some occupations were acceptable to Christians, others were clearly not.
Obviously, Christians were not t…

Issues
Facing Missions Today 30: A City on a Hill; But Jack Fell Down and Broke
His Crown
Three news items regarding the Church and its
mission this month stood out as examples of churches giving up their position
of being a city on a hill for the nations. Each is a Jack or Jill
tumbling down the hill, leaving behind the water of life above in order to have
fellowship with the world below, giving up its witness. The path taken by
three churches caving to cultural pressures does not seem to be a lonely one,
however. I will simply report the
stories to the extent that I know about them and then juxtapose an alternative,
Biblical vision for the witness of God’s people to the world.
The first story comes out of San Francisco, a city
that shares some of the notoriety that was once the dishonor of ancient
Corinth. As we might imagine John would have
written to the church (cf. Rev. 2-3), ‘To the angel of the Church of San
Francisco, write, “Stand fast in the city of sexual permissivenes…